National

Leading Gay Social App Woo-ing Urban Millennials with No-Charge Hook-Ups

NEW YORK Oct. 26 — Contrary to a recent Bloomberg report that dating apps are switching over to pay models, Jack’d, a popular hook-up app for gay urban millennials, says it will remain free.

“Our research continues to show that our targeted demographic does not pay for music, games, movies, or dating,” stated Phil Henricks, VP of Strategy and Business Development at Online Buddies, the parent company of Jack’d. “They’ve been raised to expect that digital products are free and they don’t see any reason to start paying for them now.”

Jack’d’s path to monetization is through selling advertising to corporations eager to reach the hard-to-find gay, urban millennial. “They’re a multi million dollar demographic”, Henricks said. “While they’re not willing to purchase digital products, they have tremendous buying power and have no problem shelling out $5 on a cup of coffee or $200 on a pair of sneakers.”

More than 60% of Jack’d’s revenue comes from Fortune 500 companies, clothing retailers, and the tourism industry, all of whom have run banners on the app in recent weeks. “We see it as a win for everyone. We attract the gay, urban millennials that our members want and our advertisers have a quick, easy way to reach them.”

Nearly five million men around the world have joined Jack’d since its launch in 2010 and it consistently ranks among the top four gay social apps in both the App Store and Google Play. 67% of Jack’d members in the United States are between 18-26. Nearly 60% are Black and Latino.

“Members appreciate that our free version offers many of the premium features they would have to pay for on competing apps,” Alon Rivel, Jack’d’s Brand Manager told us.

As for banners, Henricks says Jack’d members are not bothered by them, citing only 3% of members have opted to pay for Jack’d to avoid the banners. “They understand that someone has to pay for the app. As long as it’s not them, they don’t give it a second thought.”

A note from the editor-in-chief.

Today is 18th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR). It is a day not only to be acknowledged by the world’s trans community, but by the world as a whole. This is because trans people should not be pigeonholed to just their community, or even just to the LGBTQIA community. Just like cisgender people, transgender people are just … people.

Trans Day of Remembrance has been annually recognized since 1999, when it was established by trans advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith. Smith started the memorialization in response to the murder of Rita Hester, a trans woman who was murdered the year before. In the years since its inception, TDoR has become a vigil not only for Hester, but for all the trans people who have lost their lives to violence in the years since.

Today, we can see that violence against the trans community has not changed much. In 2017, 25 trans people have been victim to a fatal crime, including Texas’s own Stephanie Montez, a 47-year-old trans woman from Robstown. The majority of those people were trans women of color; and those numbers are up by 2 from 2016, with still a month and a half of the year left to go before the beginning of 2018.

Sadly, the attitude toward the trans community around the country is not generally improving – especially so with a president in the Oval Office who perpetuates antiquated and ridiculous stereotypes about the trans community by trying to ban trans servicemen and women from the military. From there, it trickles down. It trickles down to his supporters, those who are unsure of him, but who still listen, and then to the children of all of those people. Children who, if I might add, we should be educating about equality, about not seeing gender identity or sexual orientation or color or religion or nationality.

That’s why here at About Magazine, I’m making it a personal mission to make About Magazine + About News just as inclusive of our trans community as it is of the lesbian, bisexual, gay, and pansexual community. We will also be more inclusive of the intersex and asexual communities, so that no one is left behind.

To do so, we will be launching in 2018 our first page on the website for trans-only content, aptly titled About Trans. Currently, we are looking for trans writers and editors to be a part of this initiative. Until then, I will oversee it. However, I am a cis person, and in order for this operation to be genuine and authentic, it is my earnest belief that this portion of our site should be trans-run. If you or anyone you know would like to be a part of About Trans, feel free to email me at anthony@about-online.com.

Going forward, let’s remember what today stands for, and remind ourselves and our trans friends, neighbors, and loved ones that they are just as important as anyone else, and that we’re there to aid them if they should ever need it in any way. Give them your love, and give them your support, because they are just as much a part of the LGBTQIA community as anyone else that falls into any of those other categories. And if you don’t believe this to be true, read a little bit of our content today so that you can understand why trans people are so important to the queer cause. Because as genderqueer activist and musician C.N. Lester said, “Even when we are confused about someone’s gender, and don’t have a greater awareness of what it means to be trans, we have a choice to respond with kindness rather than cruelty.”

HCSO Investigators Are Asking The Public For Assistance In Locating Person Of Interest In The Disappearance Of University of Houston Student

(HOUSTON) — Harris County Sheriffs Office detectives and investigators would not rule out the ‘possibility’ the two victims were murdered by ‘cousin’ serial killers. Officials made the announcement on Monday afternoon at a press conference, where investigators revealed to the public; a pair of recent high profile missing persons cases were connected. Officials warn there could be more victims.

Sheriffs Detective Mike Richey confirmed the suspects used social media to lure the victims, but stopped short of admitting it was the gay dating app ‘Grindr.’

Harris County Sheriff’s Office investigators say the case of An Nguyen, a University of Houston student missing since March is connected to the murder of Glenser Soliman, a nurse for St. Lukes. Both victims were ‘using’ social media dating apps, though officials would not confirm it was Grindr.

Brandon Lyons, 18-years-old has been arrested and charged with capital murder of Glenser Soliman in February. Records indicate Lyons strangled Soliman after hitting him in the head with an unknown object. Lyons was originally arrested for unauthorized use of Soliman’s vehicle.

Sheriff officials say that Jerret Alan, 26-years-old, is wanted in connection to both homicide cases. Alan has been charged with credit card abuse related to Nguyen. “The last we knew, he was in the El Paso area,” officials said.

Durning the press conference several media outlets raised questions about ‘hate crimes’ and ‘targeting’ the LGBT community, but officials would not elaborate further.

“It is possible that there are other victims, or that there were (near-)victims who got away and could give us information,” Richey said.

The accused are cousins, that were living together when the crimes were committed, according to Sheriff officials. Officials presume Nguyen is dead, though no body has been recovered.